Leigh Steinberg: Can he return to superagent status?

Oct. 4, 2013
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Leigh Steinberg, sports agent trying to work his way back into the business. / Kelvin Kuo for USA TODAY

by Tom Pelissero, USA TODAY Sports

by Tom Pelissero, USA TODAY Sports

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"The American people relish the fall of the high and mighty. People get away from their own troubles by escaping into a celebrity driven press where they can feel better about themselves from the failures of others. â?¦ But people also love the comeback story because they feel that everyone will experience adversity and want the potential for rebirth and revival."

â??Excerpt of an email from Leigh Steinberg to his law students

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. â?? A prayer echoes from the church gymnasium as dozens of hard-looking young men hustle out its doors, one sandy-haired, soft-bellied 64-year-old in their midst.

Leigh Steinberg, the original sports super agent, nearly blends in with this crowd in a long-sleeve black T-shirt, faded blue jeans and white Reeboks. He grins and pops in a fresh dip.

"So," Steinberg deadpans without saying hello, "here's where we do the virgin sacrifices."

It's Tuesday. Steinberg is on Day 1,291 of his sobriety and about to embark on Day 1 of what he believes will be his second chance to change the world through pro athletes.

By week's end, he'll announce he's back in the game â?? recertified as an NFL agent and trying to convince players a third his age to entrust their careers to a man who represented eight No. 1 overall picks and virtually every quarterback of consequence before it all fell apart.

But tonight, Steinberg is here, passing through a dark corridor at the Methodist church near downtown Costa Mesa, where for 90 minutes every week he's just another recovering alcoholic, finding support in relative strangers unable to even dream about living the life he once did.

Later, at a restaurant across the street, the waiter offers a cold beer. Steinberg orders the first of many diet sodas he'll suck down during a two-day interview with USA TODAY Sports while laying out an exhaustive plan only 24-hour lucidity could generate.

He'll always be an alcoholic. He still has debts to pay off. He's not getting any younger. And he's defiant at the suggestion other agents will succeed in using any of that against him.

"Do I look old to you? Is my energy level old?" Steinberg says, his voice rising over a half-eaten ahi tuna salad. "With advances in health and lifestyle, our generation's going to live much longer. I'm filled with pent-up energy from the last three years.

"And as for alcohol â?? I'm the only agent in the country that they can certify doesn't drink."

"There wasn't anyone better"

Steinberg is a linear thinker. Point A leads to Point B leads to Point C and so on in both his plans and his storytelling, though not always along the straightest of lines.

A recounting of the run of No. 1 picks beginning with Troy Aikman and his philosophy of getting rookies into camp on time somehow makes its way to dining with Leonardo DiCaprio and joining the Anti-Defamation League to combat skinheads after the Oklahoma City bombing.

A rundown of his plans for the new agency goes from a 2014 NFL draft class to representing NBA players to other sports to branding, marketing, a reality TV show, movies, videogames, helmet development and turning stadiums into educational tools on climate change.

"He's one of the smartest guys I've ever known," said Aikman, who had lunch with Steinberg in Dallas this past summer. "He was brilliant for me and a number of other clients when I came into the league back in 1989."

Steinberg also is the rare figure who can drop names for hours on end without coming off as a name-dropper.

One of many photos on the walls of his modest new office overlooking a harbor along the Pacific Coast Highway shows Steinberg shaking hands with Barack Obama â?? and it takes a moment to remember the one who's had a hit movie based on his life isn't the President.

"In Leigh's heyday, there wasn't anyone better," said Bruce Smith, another of the seven Pro Football Hall of Famers represented by Steinberg. "He was good for the game. There wasn't any agent who was more respected."

He went from doing one deal in 1974 for Steve Bartkowski and running a business out of his parents' card room to representing more than 80 high-profile NFL clients, living in a $7 million home and consulting on the set of "Jerry Maguire" â?? a DVD copy of which sits on his desk.

Then came the sequence of events that crippled Steinberg's business, ended his marriage and sent him spiraling to the lowest point of his life.

One crisis after another

Steinberg calls selling his agency to Canadian financial-management firm Assante in 1999 "probably the worst decision I ever made."

In 2001, one of Steinberg's partners, David Dunn, broke away with half the agency's clients to form Athletes First, leading to an ugly legal fight. By 2003, Steinberg had won a $44 million judgment and bought back what was left of his business, but costs outweighed revenue.

Steinberg's father died of esophageal cancer in 2004. Two of his three children began having vision problems. He lost two homes to mold. An employee was caught taking an illegal loan from a player. Facing a lawsuit, Steinberg's certification lapsed in 2007.

"I began to feel powerless that I couldn't protect my kids, I couldn't protect my father, I couldn't provide," Steinberg said. "I had retired from my certification. It was like Job â?? it was frogs, plagues, locusts, darkness, river of blood. Then, my wife and I split up."

The divorce intensified Steinberg's financial struggles. He moved into an apartment by himself. His nighttime drinking began spilling over into his days. He was arrested for DUI in 2007 and being drunk in public in 2008. By early 2010, he'd closed his office and moved back in with his mother's house, where his "best idea was to keep drinking vodka."

After multiple failed rehab attempts, Steinberg checked into a Sober Living facility, started on a 12-step program and was told to focus solely on sobriety. Though he jokes about the program as a cult, it worked â?? his last drink was March 20, 2010. But Steinberg's problems weren't over.

There were a series of lawsuits. A default judgment was issued for $1.4 million in unpaid rent on his old office. On Jan. 11, 2012, Steinberg filed for bankruptcy. A man who'd spent three decades teaching players to take control of their futures didn't seem to have one of his own.

"When he was first out, I think he would tell you he was not ready," said Justin Greely, a 27-year-old recent law school graduate Steinberg refers to as his right-hand man. "When the bankruptcy hit, it hurt. It definitely hurt. But he never really let it get to him."

Steinberg, the new edition

It's Wednesday morning. Steinberg sits behind a desk cluttered with copies of the manuscript for his forthcoming autobiography, legal pads, photos of his children â?? Jon, now 27, Matt, 22, and Katie, 18 â?? and various mementos from the career he's attempting to build all over again.

A film crew working on a documentary about another former Steinberg client, June Jones, arrives to shoot an interview. Steinberg swaps his black sweatshirt for a blue blazer and red tie. The director remarks the office appears ready to open for business.

"Yeah," Steinberg says, chuckling. "I'm right back in 1975."

His first client was Bartkowski, who knew Steinberg as his freshman dorm counselor at Cal. The contract with the Atlanta Falcons was the largest ever for a rookie at the time â?? four years and $600,000 with a $250,000 bonus.

Steinberg can rattle off all his landmark deals â?? Warren Moon's free agency tour after leaving the CFL in 1984, Steve Young's USFL leap in '85, Drew Bledsoe's cap-busting contract with the Patriots in '93 â?? though he insists he doesn't want to be remembered for getting money.

He's a child of 1960s Berkeley, where he sparred with then-governor Ronald Reagan as student body president. He wanted to rep movie stars or be the next Perry Mason before Bartkowski's heralded arrival in Atlanta convinced him athletes could become role models for social change.

"I'm not competing against what I was before," Steinberg says, dipping his fingers into a tin of Skoal as his assistant, Alex, slinks in silently with another diet soda. "We're trying to create new, exciting experiences, new relationships, and change the world now."

That's where the broader plans come in â?? for PSA campaigns, for reviving his Sporting Green Alliance, for a new concussion foundation, for marketing the "clustered" water to defeat internal inflammation that sits on his desk in a bottle marked BEVERAGE 3.

Steinberg has financial backing from a group of Houston businessmen â?? a deal structured to pay off what remains of the debts. He has brought on a half-dozen employees, including the three 20-somethings who type nonstop at their laptops as visitors shuffle in and out. He's living with another recovering alcoholic, making sure he stays on track.

"I'm real proud of him," Aikman says. "What he's dealing with â?? a lot of people out there are afflicted with that illness, and I couldn't be prouder of the way he's taken accountability and responsibility and he's turned his life around."

All the way back?

But can he become Leigh Steinberg again â?? not just the man, but a power broker in a multibillion-dollar industry?

"There have been famous players who have come back from suspensions and dealt with all sorts of issues," Smith said. "So, we shouldn't be so judgmental as to not embrace him as he comes back to prove himself again. This country is about second chances."

Steinberg is re-entering an agent community more competitive and cutthroat than ever, and that's partly his fault. A generation that watched "Jerry Maguire" and saw Steinberg on the covers of magazines, making guest spots in movies and TV and celebrating contracts with his mega-millionaire clients wanted to be him â?? and still are trying to be.

He says he intends to target the same caliber of players and people he did before. He says he expects the recruiting process to begin with parents calling him, as almost 40 did last year. He says he can pitch not only a career, but a life plan that no one has executed more times than him. He says he still believes in a win-win negotiating strategy and not poaching other agents' clients.

He says he'll get excited about what this venture becomes "at whatever level we end up achieving" â?? then begins talking again about the reality show, which leads to the concert for peace he promoted at the Great Wall of China, which leads to his old radio shows and George Burns taking him to his first baseball game and sitting on Marilyn Monroe's lap.

The camera crew packs up. Steinberg walks into office's front room and unbuttons his dress shirt. The sports law class he teaches at nearby Chapman University begins in an hour.

"I used to have a closet in my office because I wore so many things every day," Steinberg says, a framed photo of him with members of 'N Sync on the wall behind him, next to a photo of him toasting Lennox Lewis, near a Sports Illustrated cover with a thank-you note from Young.

He spins around and walks down the hall to complete the change. He doesn't look old really â?? just different. Everything's a little different now.